How to Fix Your Facebook Feed to See Content You Like

What is Facebook's Feeds Tab?

The Facebook Feeds tab is a separate channel on Facebook that exclusively shows content from five themed feeds: Favorites, Groups, Pages, Friends, and All (plus ads, of course).

The first four are all curated exactly like you'd expect from their names. The Friends feed only shows content from your friends, the Groups feed is only content from groups you're a member of, etc. The All feed is perhaps the most interesting one to me because it combines all of the others into one single feed.

What does it sound like to have a curated feed of only your friends, pages, and groups you opted into? A lot like old Facebook!

It was a bit of fresh air to find this one buried down in settings (on mobile, at least- more on that in a minute), because more accessible feeds, like Friends only or Groups only felt like they were missing something, namely each other! After starting to show this feed, I found it really hard to go back, and now use it almost exclusively when on the social network.

One downside about this feed is worth stating upfront, though- the Feeds tab is only organized in chronological order. It doesn't seem to be algorithmically controlled, refresh based on content you've seen, or anything of the like. It is only organized by what was posted most recently.

Depending on the people, pages, and groups you follow, you may see a lot of content from one entity more than others (such as a very busy Facebook group or chatty friend). Likewise, if you don't follow too many people and pages, the feed may refresh slower than you are used to with the busy feeds that are being pushed on everyone these days.

I follow enough pages that my feed updates fast enough for me to barely notice this. My wife's feed was so slow she didn't understand why I was so excited about it. Your mileage will vary. Thankfully, you can always follow more groups and pages and actually be able to see them if you want to fix that!

So, how can you find these feeds and use them regularly? Let's break down the process on both desktop and mobile.

Getting the Facebook Feeds Tab on Mobile

Historically, finding the Feeds tab on Mobile often required navigating to the settings on your profile (by clicking your profile photo in the navigation bar) and searching for the Feeds button among a sea of other options.

Facebook clearly doesn't want it to be used as the primary feed, given how difficult it is to find this option. Having to take these extra steps often makes most of us give up and use the default feed.

But did you know you can pin the Feeds tab to the navigation bar on Mobile for quicker access? This was the game changer that made me fall in love with the feed, and so far, I've found two ways to do this.

First, and perhaps the easiest, is if you click and hold one of the navigation buttons that are not the home feed or notifications button, you may get a pop-up that lets you go to a page to customize the pinned feed items. Head there, select the feeds you prefer (I chose Feed, Groups, and Friends), save the settings, close the app, reopen it with a fresh start, and they should be there for fast access.

Second, if you do not have this quick access option, navigate to Settings & Privacy, find the next Settings button within that, and then find the Tabs Bar option and select Customize. You'll end up on the same tab there to pick what you want pinned. Again, save, close the app, and reopen it fresh to see the new buttons in the app!

• I've found that on my mobile app, when I change the buttons and click save, the current buttons behave strangely- almost like the app still thinks the old ones are there despite the update. By completely closing the app and reloading it with a fresh load, the buttons were refreshed and became functional.

One thing I love about having Feeds pinned to the navigation is that, when selected, it remains the default feed when clicking back from other tabs (such as Notifications) for a period of time insofar as the app remains open in the background. Tabbing back one too many times or closing the app completely will default back to Home, but it is nice that the Feeds tab does seem to stick around for a bit all the same.

Unfortunately, you cannot remove the Home feed or the Notifications feed from the pinned bar no matter what you do, but this at least makes navigating to the much more enjoyable Feeds tab a little bit easier (even if pinned as the default would be the best option!).

Getting the Facebook Feeds Tab on Desktop

Desktop, unfortunately, is not as customizable as Mobile, but is a fair bit easier to get to the Feeds tab all the same.

Although I have yet to find a way to customize the navigation tab bar like you can on mobile, my left sidebar shows quick links to most other Feeds (Friends, Feeds, Memories, etc.). So in just a single click, I could get back onto the Feeds tab with no extra work- it was always right there in front of me and I just never used it until recently.

The big downside to the Feeds tab on desktop is that, when I click to it at least, the right chat sidebar of online friends goes away and the layout looks a bit wonky from what I'm used to.

That said, given that my normal Home feed on desktop is not as prone to garbage as on Mobile, and that the Feeds button is visible at all times, I can manage here.

Simply knowing it is there is a big step to improve what you see!

Overall, figuring out how to get to the Feeds tab quicker, particularly on mobile, gave my Facebook feed a new lease on life. Although it still moves slower than the current Home feeds, I have to admit it is a breath of fresh air to not be forced to see a ton of bad content left and right. So if you're like me and hate discovery-style feeds that don't serve anything you're actually interested in, give this feed a try!

Have you started using the Feeds tab on Facebook? What do you think about it? Comment to share!